Ever since the boomer ascendancy began over 50 years ago, summer at the moves has meant end-to-end amusements aimed at adolescent males. Witless teen romances from “Beach Blanket Bingo” on, but mostly cartoonish thrill rides.
Once, these at least tried to leaven the loaf with a little characterization and wit, as in “Jaws,” the Indiana Jones movies and the original “Star Wars.” The summer movie has over time degenerated into brain dead exercises in fast vehicles, punch outs and high explosives.
As early as the “Star Wars” sequels, young adult gave way t o infantile as the slyly droll Alec Guinness was replaced by the geriatric-Chihuahua look of a backward-talking zen master puppet. Instead of Han Solo and Darth Vader, throwbacks to Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, we now get pencil-neck, geek heroes and clanking robot villains. Sad.
I admit to getting sucked in by Jurassic Park IX, or whatever it’s called, mostly because I remember the original with some qualified fondness and because Chris Pratt was so much fun in last summer’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” It allowed him to channel the cheerful bad boy swagger of Harrison Ford in his youth. Alas, he was overwhelmed by special effects and a paint-by-numbers script in “Jurassic,” a dinosaur-size dud.
“Ant-Man” was the only other dopey simmer movie I gave a try, this time because Paul Rudd as a superhero seemed like it could be a hoot. And it was. The villain wasn’t much, and Michael Douglas trying to be avuncular/irascible just made you yearn for Judd Hirsch in “Independence Day” or Walter Matthieu in anything. But Rudd was funny, as were his sidekicks, especially the dim, but likable, motormouth, Michael Pena.
Still, one decent, comic-action film does not a summer make. What’s a sentient adult movie lover to do during the long drought that now stretches from April to September? Watch TV, perhaps, or seek out the few oases in the desert of bloated action adventures. These tend to be movies targeted at oldsters on the assumption that everyone under 30 cares only about Marvel comics and franchises based on toys for 10-year-olds.
So, have I found any summer movies to watch that aren’t “summer movies?” Yes.
The best movie of the summer is one I never would have seen, if not for stellar reviews, since it is two things I normally avoid like the plague — a High School movie and a fatal disease movie. But “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” is the funniest look at High School misfits since “Easy A,” and makes tearjerking tolerable for the first time since “”Bang the Drum Slowly.”
Greg is white. Earl is black. They fail to fit in, but cope by making oddball movie parodies together that they never show to anyone. Greg’s secret to sliding through high school relatively unscathed is to use bland, superficial amiability with every competing clique.
Greg’s father, Nick Offerman, is a tenured anthropology professor who wanders the house in a bathrobe. His mother, Connie Britton, is an energetic go-getter and do-gooder who regards Greg as worryingly likely to turn into his slacker father. She constantly pressures him to complete his college applications until she finds a new cause.
A neighbor girl, Rachel, the charming Olivia Cooke, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Greg should do the right thing and pay a visit to buck her up, a notion that causes him to writhe with embarrassment. But mom is relentless, so he complies. Rachel naturally enough thinks he’s come out of pity. Greg assures her he’s only there because his mother is the “Lebron James of nagging.”
Naturally, a friendship blossoms. Greg and Earl even share their film parodies with Rachel only to discover later that she too has a secret, artistic life. They were made for each other, just not for high school. Luckily Rachel has contrived more successfully than Greg’s mother to take care of Greg’s college applications where, we assume, he will find a niche and probably create a film called “Me and Earl.” There are endless pitfalls for a film like this, but “Me and Earl’ avoids them all.
“Gemma Bovery” is the sort of confection the French excel at. When they try to work in American genres, especially crime, noir, private eye films the results are invariably dire. The French don’t do hard boiled as well as souffléd. At light comedy, farce and some versions of the women’s picture they can’t be beat.
In “Gemma,” the watchful, hangdog Fabrice Luchini plays Joubert, a middle-aged Paris editor who has returned to a Norman village to take over his late father’s bakery. One day across the road a young couple moves in.
He is flabbergasted to learn the luminous young wife, the adorable Gemma Arterton, bears the name Gemma Bovery. Joubert (the echo of Javert is probably no accident) is obsessed with Flaubert and is quickly equally fixated on Gemma whose life he fears is beginning to imitate art. He tries to save her from the original’s fate with unexpected, unintended consequences. This sweet, silly premise is carried out with tremendous wit and economy by writer/director Anne Fontaine.
“Love and Mercy,” not for the first time, deals with the troubled second act of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s life. Misdiagnosed mental illness, never admitted child abuse and self-medication turned the musician into a nearly catatonic recluse, victimized by a predatory therapist (a predictably creepy Paul Giamatti). Wilson was saved by the love of a good woman, a Hollywood car saleslady.
Wilson is played young by Paul Dano, who is fine, and middle-aged and deeply odd, but touchingly vulnerable by John Cusack who gets a chance to remind us he can act when he gets material worth the effort. The Cadillac salesgirl is twinkly, tough and touched in a role that allows Elizabeth Banks to do more than she is usually allowed. A labor of love by director Bill Pohlad.
Finally, Ian McKellen is the 93-year-old “Mr. Holmes.” Sherlock, that is. He has been beekeeping in rural England for 30 years and is slowly losing his memory. He lives at class-conscious arm’s length from his widowed housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her young son. Holmes is bedeviled by his last case, which for some reason led to his abrupt retirement. With the help of the boy, he recovers the memory of the case and realizes that cold rationality can solve puzzles but may not necessarily heal broken hearts.
“Mr. Holmes” is a story of redemption rather than ratiocination. McKellen provides a master class in acting by showing how a great deal can be said employing the most subtle means.